A consulting organisation in the field of construction materials and geotechnical engineering, ACTS said it has been commissioned to carry out the quality control of all construction materials that will be used in the Kingdom Tower project, the world’s first kilometre-high skyscraper currently under construction in Jeddah.

The centerpiece and first construction phase of the Kingdom City development located along the Red Sea on the north side of Jeddah, the tower is designed to be over 1,000 metres tall, encompassing a total construction area of 530,000 sq m.

The building will also boast of 200 floors in total, 160 of which are habitable. Its preliminary cost is set at $1.23 billion, and would overshadow Dubai’s Burj Khalifa by at least 173 metres, said the company in its statement.

"The great height of the Kingdom Tower calls for high strength, high performance concrete, and to ensure adherence to the highest quality standards, ACTS will be mobilising state-of-the art testing equipment and expert professionals to do the third party testing works on about half a million cubic metres of concrete and around 80,000 tons of steel to be used on the mega project," stated ACTS.

ACTS has been involved on similarly challenging large infrastructure projects around the Gulf, and has been providing a range of quality control services including inspection and supervision, monitoring of mass concrete, testing and evaluation of various materials as well as audit for asphalt and concrete production facilities.

Among the mega projects previously commissioned to ACTS for quality control was Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport, which involved the testing of a total of 3.5 million cubic meters of concrete.

The company will also deploy special equipment to evaluate the rheological properties of concrete to ensure concrete will be pumpable to very high elevations.

Deploying around 100 expert staff members, ACTS will install a fully-equipped site laboratory, which will carry the day-to-day quality control operations and will also provide specialised testing services from its laboratory facility in Briman area in Jeddah, which is one of the largest testing facilities in the Middle East, said a top official.

Nabil Batrawi, the project director, Saudi Bin Ladin Group (SBG), said, “We selected ACTS after a thorough evaluation of their capabilities and strength. We look forward to working with them to ensure this project receives the best attention to quality it deserves."

ACTS chairman Khaled Awad said the appointment of ACTS as an independent testing agency for one of the most challenging engineering structures in the world, is a vote of trust in its capabilities and extensive experience in materials testing and engineering.

"We will be investing our experience and knowledge to provide accurate, traceable and reliable test information in the largest megatall building in the world," he added.

ACTS operates laboratories in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and has presence in more than 12 countries in the Middle East for consulting and training.-TradeArabia News Service